Growing a Pair

Smug Christmas Adventures – Whale Watching, Mirissa, Sri Lanka

Last updated on December 30, 2015 by Evan Hostad

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Today we woke up at 6:00am We had thirty minutes to get ready for whale watching. When we were ready we huddled into a tuk tuk and set of on our adventure. It took about five minutes to get to the harbour. We found our boat and jumped aboard, then we waited a WHOLE hour before everyone else got on. When everyone was on, the engine whirred into life. We were about 500 meters out in the vast Indian ocean when we saw the first dolphin pod. In the pod there were about 25 dolphins. Over the next three or so hours we saw another pod of dolphins, flying fish, turtles, and ten blue whales. When the whales dived all the staff on the boat chanted “tail up!”

Seeing the whales was a once in a life time experience. When I saw my first spray from a whale breathing, I was so excited that my head almost burst! When the first whale dived, its tail was about three meters long and 5 inches thick.

BLUE WHALE FACTS

Blue whales can grow to be thirty meters long and weigh up to 180 tonnes.
They are dark on top and light underneath for camouflage .
There are three species of blue whale:
- Musculus of the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans
- Intermedia of the Southern ocean.
- Brevicauda in the Indian and South Pacific ocean
They are the largest living thing and the heaviest known to have lived.
Even though it is the biggest animal, it still eats one of the smallest. It eats 40 million krill a day which weighs up to 3.5 tonnes.
A blue whale skull is 5.8 meters long.
When a baby blue whale is born it weighs 2.5 tonnes, is 7 meters long and it drinks 570 litres of milk a day.